step by step on a piece of string
by ratherembarrassing
Summary: written for a headcanon meme; rachel and santana's firsts.


_written for a headcanon meme; rachel and santana's firsts. _

...

1.

The party's so loud she can hear it on the street below. There's snow, and Rachel almost slips as she steps out the door to the building, looking around for the girl who moments before had fled the apartment in near-tears.

"Where are you going," she screams at Santana, halfway down the street and heading towards Seventh Avenue and subways and cabs and escape, even though it's escape from her own home.

"What do you care," is shouted over Santana's shoulder, and she throws back "I could ask you the same question."

Santana stops before she reaches the corner, and there's snow starting to fall, catching on her scarf and the locks of hair peaking out from under her hat. For a girl in a hurry, she stopped to bundle up. Like she wanted to be caught.

"Why _do _you care," she asks. "Why do you care about where I'm working, and what I'm eating, and who I'm dating," she asks even though she knows the answer. She needs to hear the answer now.

Santana's not in a giving mood. "I don't," she snaps, but her voice is low.

"You do," Rachel says. "Maybe you don't know why yet."

She shurgs and turns to go, but Santana's hand catches her elbow, pulls her around roughly. "I don-," a sob closes her throat, the denial incomplete. "I d-," and she lurches forward, dropping her head to Rachel's shoulder.

"You don't understand," is whispered into the wool of her coat, Santana pressing in hard to the side of Rachel's neck, and Rachel can feel the body against hers tremble where they meet.

Her hands catch on Santana's shoulders, push her back enough to see her face and the streak of dampness across her cheeks. "What don't I understand."

"Of course I- because I-" and the rest of whatever she's going to say is lost, smothered between the press of Santana's mouth against Rachel's. She presses hard, just as she had against Rachel's neck.

Rachel is the least surprised person in Manhattan, and she curls her palms around the damp cheeks of maybe the most.

2.

One of the food capitals of the world, and there isn't a single vegan option on the menu in front of her.

Rachel shakes her head, but there's a smile on her lips.

Santana is so mortified they're three blocks away before either of them realize she's dragged Rachel out of there without paying for their drinks.

She doesn't hear where Santana tells the cab driver to take them, and she thinks they're heading back to her dorm until they turn left at St Marks Place when they should have turned right on 9th.

The place Santana pulls her into is… not a place she would willingly choose to step into, but she gamely takes a seat at the counter. Santana pulls a menu from further down the counter, and drops it in front of Rachel, the air disturbed and sending a napkin flying off the formica and onto the floor.

"There you go," Santana huffs, but Rachel's become pretty good at seeing through the bluster that covers up Santana's near-endless embarrassment over every little feeling she has. "Everything's vegetarian, most of it's vegan. There's even pierogi; gets your yiddish on."

"What is this place," Rachel ignores the menu in favor of taking in the glow of the fluorescent lights overhead reflecting off the dull metal pots and pans and shelves behind the counter. There's matching red and yellow squeeze bottles on the counter between their two stools.

"I dunno. They came up on Menupages when I was looking for a place that would deliver breakfast at 4am after that bar last week. They don't, but the Jewish and the vegan and shit seemed to stick in my head. I wonder why."

Her vegan pierogi are better than anything her daddy ever made, but she won't be telling him or Santana that.

3.

Santana watches a lot of tv, and Rachel watches a lot of movies. They end up spending a lot of time on Santana's couch.

Santana's apartment is on the top floor, and it's been raining for three days straight. Rachel hasn't been back to her dorm for the last two. The rain's so loud they couldn't sleep, so they've been watching The Twilight Zone, it being about the only thing they both agree is perfect. It's 3 in the morning, and the dvd has no more episodes.

Rachel's slumped against Santana's side, a blanket tossed across her body and most of Santana's legs. She's sleepy, but not tired despite the hour, and rather than get up she curls into the body half-underneath her, stretching her spine as Santana scratches her back through her sleep shirt.

"You're comfy," she says, rolling her head back to look up at Santana.

"You're not," Santana smirks, and bends down to kiss her on the nose. "But that's okay."

Rachel unfolds a little, stretching up to meet Santana's lips. As she goes to move back, Santana pulls her up, shifting them until they're lying flush along the couch. They spend a lot of time on Santana's couch, but not at 3am, and not in their pyjamas, and not with the glow of the blank tv and the sound of rain finally starting to die out overhead.

Santana's lips always taste like something different, but at 3am they just taste like Santana, and she can't stop herself from going back for more, and more. Santana's hand fists in her hair and she gives up leaving those lips at all.

She sinks into the couch and Santana follows, and she pushes underneath Santana's sleep shorts and Santana follows, too. Santana follows, then leads, and eventually it's just the two of them rocking against each other, still under the blanket, and hands buried in and around each other until Rachel can't breathe but she can't pull away until her body takes over any choice. Still she doesn't pull away, just bends in closer, pressing harder, and the sticky skin against skin holds them locked together for long moments.

Santana's hand is still in her hair, and her fingers flex against her skull.

"Maybe you're a little comfy," and Rachel bites at the inside of Santana's arm where it rests under her head.

4.

She doesn't know why she says it. The worst part is she doesn't even realize it's coming out of her mouth until Santana slaps her.

Hours later, Santana finds her sitting on the stoop outside her building. It's warm, but that's irrelevant.

"Remember when I gave you that photo of me to put in your locker," she says, Santana leaning against the rail with a weary sigh. "You apologized to me, you admitted you hated me." Santana isn't looking at her, and it makes this easier somehow. "I never did the same."

Some people walk by, and she wants to go with them. Santana sits beside her, but her feet rest a step below Rachel's own.

"Did you hate me," she asks.

Rachel nods, "I did. A lot, I think."

"You never hated Quinn."

"Quinn couldn't take everything from me."

Santana looks then, face creased into a frown. "I never wanted anything you had."

"That was the worst part," Rachel tips her head to the side, temple pressed into the edge of Santana's shoulder. "You didn't want Finn, but you had him. You didn't want to be a singer, but you had all that talent."

"Still have all that talent," Santana says, and Rachel smiles for a second.

"You were the one who could take everything I wanted away from me. And now look at us." She slides her fingers between Santana's. "You still can."

"But I don't want to, now. Not that I did then." She pulls Rachel closer. "Now I want to give you everything."

"Me, too," she whispers. "And I want to start by giving you an apology I owed you a year ago."

"Do I get 'I'm sorry' cupcakes," she can feel Santana's smile.

5.

She's been gone since the start of summer, and it's so cliche.

Santana flies back to Lima with her, but since she doesn't get a summer vacation from life, she goes back after two weeks because the actress who beat her out in the last round at a casting call "had the clap or some shit," and apparently Santana had been the second choice.

It's television, and it's not singing, and it's only two days, but Santana doesn't care.

She cares, because it means four weeks apart, but no one understands that pull towards the spotlight more than Rachel, and she kisses Santana goodbye at the Cleveland airport, "midwestern homophobia be damned," whispered against Santana's lips.

Her dads think she has some kind of sleep disorder, or internet addiction—

"You're not watching pornography, are you," her dad asks.

She tosses a cushion at him with an outraged squeal.

—until she explains that Santana's other job, the one where she gets to sing, doesn't start until 8, so they can Skype all day, and she likes to say goodnight when Santana gets home at 3 in the morning. Without classes to get up for, she falls into Santana's sleep schedule.

Despite the computer screens and occasional bad connection, she feels closer to Santana than when she did standing in Cleveland.

Six weeks later and they're on the opposite side of the security gates, Rachel pushing through the JFK masses. When she'd said so, Rachel hadn't understood why Santana was going to meet her at the airport, it's a stupidly long and not-covered-by-a-Metrocard train trip through Queens, which Santana claims is a place that gives her hives.

She thinks she gets it when she sees Santana shoving her own way through the crowd until she reaches Rachel, and then they're pressed together while people bustle around them. Santana doesn't seem to notice, and Rachel just wants to kiss her girlfriend, but said girlfriend is too busy just looking at her, hands rising to cradle her jaw.

"I love you," Santana says, with a deliberateness that startles a delighted laugh from her.

It's so cliche, and Rachel loves it. Loves her for it.


End file.
